MarkWhittington writes: The EM drive, the so-called “impossible” space drive that uses no propellant, has roiled the aerospace world for the past several years, ever since it was proposed by British aerospace engineer Robert Shawyer. In essence, the claim advanced by Shawyer and others is that if you bounced microwaves in a truncated cone, thrust would be produced out the open end. Most scientists have snorted at the idea, noting correctly that such a thing would violate physical laws. However, organizations as prestigious as NASA have replicated the same results, that prototypes of the EM drive produces thrust. How does one reconcile the experimental results with the apparent scientific impossibility? MIT Technology Review suggested a reason why.

prisoninmate writes: From the documentation submitted by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to FCC, it looks like the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B single-board computer should come with built-in Wi-Fi, as well as Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) support, which might sound very attractive to all Raspberry Pi fans that have waited patiently for these features to come to the world's most popular SBC board. The first signs of the existence of an upcoming Raspberry Pi 3 Model B board come exactly one year after the release of Raspberry Pi 2 in February 2015, and it looks like February is the perfect month of the year for the Raspberry Pi Foundation to announce a new Raspberry Pi board.

msm1267 writes: Attackers managed to hijack the website of the Linux Mint operating system to push a backdoored ISO image of the software to users over the weekend.

The developers behind the software, one of, if not the most popular Linux distribution, are unsure what the hackers are aiming to achieve by the move but acknowledge that if there are more efforts to attack their project, they plan to get the authorities involved.

Clement Lefebvre, the creator of Linux Mint, disclosed the incident in a blog post early Saturday morning and downplayed it by saying only one version, Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon, was compromised and only users who downloaded it via the official site on Feb. 20 are believed to be affected. Users who downloaded through torrents or a direct HTTP link are not affected Lefebvre said.Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes: Ivan Ristic is well-known in the information security world, and his name has become almost a synonym for SSL Labs, a project he started in early 2009. Before that, he was mostly known for his work with OWASP and the development of the wildly popular open source web application firewall ModSecurity. While SSL Labs was something Ristic worked on in his spare time, over time it became his main focus. In fact, over the years, the project incorporated a great number of checks that are impossible to perform manually. It's a game changer because, to assess your TLS configuration, you don't need to be an expert. Read the story about the project's evolution on Help Net Security.

schwit1 writes: For the first time, solar thermal can compete with natural gas during nighttime peak demand

Solar power projects intended to turn solar heat into steam to generate electricity have struggled to compete amid tumbling prices for solar energy from solid-state photovoltaic (PV) panels. But the first commercial-scale implementation of an innovative solar thermal design could turn the tide. Engineered from the ground up to store some of its solar energy, the 110-megawatt plant is nearing completion in the Crescent Dunes near Tonopah, Nev. It aims to simultaneously produce the cheapest solar thermal power and to dispatch that power for up to 10 hours after the setting sun has idled photovoltaics.

Lucas123 writes: The method by which Volkswagen diesel cars were able to thwart emissions tests and spew up to 40X the nitrogen oxide levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency was relatively simple. It was more likely no more than a single line of code used to detect when an emissions test was being performed and place the emissions system in an alternate mode — something as simple as a software "on/off" switch. Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn, who stepping down as the result of his company's scandal, has said he had no knowledge of the emissions cheat, but software dev/test audit trails are almost certain to pinpoint who embedded the code and who authorized it. You can actually see who asked the developer to write that code," said Nikhil Kaul, a product manager at test/dev software maker SmartBear Software. "Then if you go upstream you can see who that person's boss was...and see if testing happened...and, if testing didn't happen. So you can go from the bottom up to nail everyone."

astroengine writes: Scientists have long puzzled over how gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn got to be so big. Current theories suggest the cores of these behemoths are comprised of mini-planets, some 62- to 620 miles in diameter, which collided and gradually merged together over time. But computer simulations show this process is more likely to produce hundreds of Earth-sized worlds. Instead, a new study suggests "slow pebble accretion" is a more likely process.

Gryle writes: ArsTechnica is reporting on an interesting legal tactic by ISPs in the net neutrality fight. In a 95-page brief the United States Telecom Association claims Internet access qualifies as information service, not a telecommunication service, because it involves computer processing. The brief further claims "The FCC's reclassification of mobile broadband internet access as a common-carrier service is doubly unlawful" (page 56).

An anonymous reader writes: Linux logs always confused me, but this guide makes them really easy. It shows how to troubleshoot why a system shut down, who is trying to attack or log into the system, and more. It even covers basic command line tools all the way to more sophisticated analysis systems.

donaldrobertson writes: "On July 15th, 2015, the Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance Lab, along with the Software Freedom Conservancy, announces that, after two years of negotiations, Canonical, Ltd. has published an update to the licensing terms of Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

This update now makes Canonical's policy unequivocally comply with the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other free software licenses. It does this by adding a "trump clause" that prevails in all situations possibly covered by the policy:"

An anonymous reader writes: The Atlas V rocket is on schedule to launch this morning from Cape Canaveral to send a new generation GPS satellite into orbit. The GPS IIF-10 being launched into orbit by the Atlas V rocket will serve U.S. military options on lad, sea, and by air. The new tech provides greater accuracy, increased signals, and enhanced performance for users.

An anonymous reader writes: Kaspersky Lab has detected curious behavior in a new threat from the TeslaCrypt ransomware encryptor family. In version 2.0 of the Trojan notorious for infecting computer gamers, it displays an HTML page in the web browser which is an exact copy of CryptoWall 3.0, another ransomware program. After a successful infection, the malicious program demands a $500 ransom for the decryption key; if the victim delays, the ransom doubles. When TeslaCrypt infects a new victim, it generates a new unique Bitcoin address to receive the victim’s ransom payment and a secret key to withdraw it. TeslaCrypt’s C&C servers are located in the Tor network. The Trojan’s version 2.0 uses two sets of keys: one set is unique within one infected system, the other is generated repeatedly each time the malicious program is re-launched in the system. Moreover, the secret key with which user files get encrypted is not saved on the hard drive, which makes the process of decrypting the user files significantly more complicated.

jrepin writes: SUSE announced partner program expansion to include support for 64-bit ARM server processors. This expansion makes available to partners a version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 that allows them to develop, test and deliver products to the market using 64-bit ARM chips. To simplify partner access, SUSE has also implemented support for ARM and AArch64 into its openSUSE Build Service. This allows the community to build packages against real 64-bit ARM hardware and the SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 binaries,